Sneak Peak at new Import and Export Wizards!

I’m putting the finishing touches on the 0.1.027 release. I’m pretty excited about three new features included in this version – Text Export wizard, Text Import wizard, and Import Database dialog. These are features that were included in Panorama 6 but I think are much improved (for one thing, there are no modal dialogs).

Text Export Wizard

The Text Export wizard is accessible from a submenu in the File menu. This wizard allows export formats to be configured with a graphical UI, or by editing a textual specification (blueprint). Text can be exported to tab or comma separated text, JSON, or HTML (as a table). A live preview immediately shows the effect of configuration changes. Named export templates can be saved and re-used, and the wizard imports any existing templates from Panorama 6.

When you are exporting as an HTML table the preview shows the actual table as you work.

Text Import Wizard

The Text Import wizard is accessible from a submenu in the File menu. This wizard allows import fields to be customized with a graphical UI, or by editing a textual specification. Text can be imported from files, dropped text, or the clipboard. Named import templates can be saved and re-used, and the wizard imports any existing templates from Panorama 6.

When you perform the actual import, you can choose from appending to or replacing the existing data. Either way, the decision is not final, because you can always Undo – even if you imported a million records!

Import Database Dialog

In Panorama 6 there were a couple of checkboxes in the Open File dialog that allowed you to import one database into another. In Panorama X this has been promoted into a separate dialog sheet, accessible from the Import submenu in the File menu. The dialog sheet gives you full control over the import operation, and shows you in advance how the fields in the two databases will be matched up.

Note: There is one slight difference from Panorama 6 – a database must be open before you can import it.


Built entirely with Panorama X!

As a side note, these new wizards and dialogs were built entirely with Panorama itself. These wizards and dialog sheets were built entirely with standard Panorama X forms, procedures and formulas. In fact, not a single change was made to Panorama itself to facilitate building these new features. I was able to build these from scratch using the same standard form components and programming tools that are available to all of you – no special tricks. Even better, I didn’t encounter any crashes or glitches along the way – at one point I worked on the Text Export wizard for several days without even closing Panorama X or even the wizard database.

Impressive. I look forward to putting these to work. I also love the idea of using Panorama to build its own tools.